TWIGG G.C. — 101 ORIGINAL HAND-DRAWN AND HAND-COLORED SOCIAL CLUB ANNOUNCEMENTS, PHILADELPHIA, 1939–1957
Item #1759
An extensive collection of 101 individually illustrated, handmade postcards and meeting announcements documenting nearly two decades in the life of TWIGG G.C., a Philadelphia-area social club founded circa 1937. Each measures approximately 3.25 × 5.5 inches and features original drawings in ink and colored pencil, accompanied by handwritten announcements, humorous observations, and playful commentary on the club's members and activities.
The collection was preserved by Horatio Cooper of 1653 Haworth Street, Philadelphia, to whom the cards were addressed, frequently together with his wife. A possible identification is Horatio Cooper (1897–1972), a Philadelphia resident, although this connection has not been conclusively established. The survival of this correspondence as a single recipient's archive provides an unusually cohesive record of the club's activities and personal relationships.
The illustrations include caricatures, comic figures, animals, seasonal scenes, holiday imagery, domestic interiors, and whimsical visual puns. The cards announce dinners, birthday celebrations, masquerade parties, elections, picnics, beach excursions, rummage sales, and regular meetings held in members' homes and other locations throughout Philadelphia and its surrounding communities.
A particularly significant card, postmarked October 8, 1957, announces the club's 163rd meeting and 20th anniversary celebration on October 26, establishing its origins around 1937. Other cards document gatherings during World War II and the postwar years, providing an unusually sustained record of friendship, domestic entertaining, neighborhood relationships, and informal associational life in mid-twentieth-century America.
The cards identify numerous members and hosts, including the Cooper, Thomas, West, and Grummun families. Several bear Philadelphia postal cancellations, while others appear to have been hand-delivered. The illustrations display a remarkably consistent amateur artistic style, suggesting that much of the collection may be the work of a single individual or closely associated contributors. The precise meaning of the club's initials, G.C., remains unidentified.
An appealing and unusually cohesive body of American vernacular artwork, combining original cartooning, personal humor, and the social history of a longstanding circle of friends. Particularly interesting for its documentation of an otherwise little-known Philadelphia social organization through the personal archive of one of its members.
101 cards, approximately 3.25 × 5.5 inches each. Varying degrees of toning, handling wear, occasional staining, and remnants of mounting or adhesive, with the illustrations generally well preserved.
Price: $2,500.00